Why does God ‘allow’ social practices that are wrong?

“Because the Bible gives instructions that allows for them in certain historical contexts does not necessarily mean that the Bible condones those practices.” This statement is from your answer to the question on slavery in the Old Testament. If God does not condone certain practices, could He not have outrightly said no to those things? If He could say, “Do not eat a particular food or wear clothes of mixed fabric (which were prevalent among the heathens),” could He not have said, “Don’t own slaves or don’t divorce?” Why does He still allow it even though He knows it’s wrong?

It is important to remember, right at the outset, that slavery in the Bible was not like the well-known slave trade of the last few centuries where people were stolen (a crime incurring capital punishment in the Old Testament), bought and sold as property. It was also quite different from the harsh slavery of different pagan cultures throughout the world. The following table shows various slave systems and how slaves were treated in each of them.

In short, the slaves in Israel were given such protection that any honest inquirer would understand this was not slavery in the ordinary sense, but a complete reform of the institution itself. God cared for the slaves, and His care and love for them is seen in the rights and rules He gave for their protection. Slaves in Israel would have been treated with the same harshness as in other cultures had God simply ignored the problem.

I’m not trying to paint too rosy a picture here, for I do realise that, for slaves, legal rights and economic choices were limited in comparison with those who were free. Although we are dealing with a less hideous form of slavery, it is still slavery! This raises the important question: why didn’t God insist on the immediate abolishment of all forms of slavery? This is a legitimate question.

Little by little

To answer this, we need to go back to the concept I explained in my previous answer on Old Testament slavery: progressive revelation. It means that God didn’t reveal His character and will to human beings all at once, but piece by piece over a long period of time. The content of God’s revealed will develops from being a small sapling to becoming a full-grown tree in the New Testament. So, we must be careful not to pull a verse out of its context and then assume that this is what God intended for all of human history.

We must be careful not to pull a verse out of its context and then assume that this is what God intended for all of human history

Also, I clarified that God accommodates His revelation to particular historical contexts and even to sinful social systems within them. In the words of Paul Copan, “Sinai legislation makes a number of moral improvements without completely overhauling ancient Near Eastern social structures and assumptions. God ‘works with’ Israel as He finds her. He meets His people where they are while seeking to show them a higher ideal in the context of ancient Near Eastern life. . . . [Thus] Given certain fixed assumptions in the ancient Near East, God didn’t impose legislation that Israel wasn’t ready for. He moved incrementally… God didn’t banish all fallen, flawed, ingrained social structures when Israel wasn’t ready to handle the ideals. Taking into account the actual, God encoded more feasible laws, though He directed His people toward moral improvement. He condescended by giving Israel a jumping-off place, pointing them to a better path. . .  In fact, Israel’s laws reveal dramatic moral improvements over the practices of the other ancient Near Eastern people. God’s act of incrementally ‘humanising’ ancient Near Eastern structures for Israel meant diminished harshness and an elevated status of debt-servants, even if certain negative customs weren’t fully eliminated” (Is God a Moral Monster?).

In other words, God’s revealed will, on many occasions, served to regulate and restrain sinful behaviour and practices, rather than immediately eradicate them. God allowed polygamy and divorce for a variety of reasons in the Old Testament without ever endorsing them as ideals. That’s why Jesus in answering the Pharisees about divorce said, “Because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so” (Matthew 19:8).

Weakening the social system

You might still say, “Granted that the slavery in Israel may not have been as severe as what was seen in pagan cultures, and that God was perhaps accommodating His revelation within a historical context, but I still don’t understand why the Bible doesn’t put an end to slavery.” A couple of points could be given in response.

One is the context of the early church. The early church was oppressed by, and largely living under, Roman rule. That’s why the New Testament writers were hesitant to call for actions that could cause civil and social unrest. This might even impede the progress of the gospel. However, nothing that the New Testament authors wrote would make us think they assumed the goodness of the institution.

The New Testament writers were hesitant to call for actions that could cause civil and social unrest, or impede the progress of the gospel

The second response is that Paul and the other New Testament writers recorded clear principles that would eventually weaken and eliminate the institution of slavery. The epistle of Paul to Philemon is a case in point. Philemon owned a slave by the name of Onesimus. Several scholars believe that Onesimus stole some money from Philemon and ran away to Rome where he met Paul and became a Christian. If Paul endorsed slavery in any sense, he would have instructed Onesimus to return to Philemon his master to make restitution. But instead Paul appeals to Philemon to receive him back, “no longer as a bondservant but more than a bondservant, as a beloved brother” (v.16). He also writes, “if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me” (v.17). To explain it more clearly, Paul was urging Philemon to look at Onesimus not as his slave, but as his brother in Christ. On that basis, Christians in the early church treated one another as brothers and sisters in Christ even while slavery as a cultural and social institution was still in place. The gospel and the eventual transformation it brings stood against all forms of slavery.

What I’ve written may not fully satisfy everyone, but I urge you to submit to the authority of Scripture, recognising that God in His wisdom has His own ways of addressing issues like these.